If the Steelers have Styx, and the Bills have the Killers, then the Panthers have Carolina MiC, the homegrown musician and lifelong football fan whose now-viral song "If I Had $150,000" has taken the Carolina fanbase (and the NFL as a whole) by storm.
Since the tune went mega-viral a few months ago, Carolina MiC (whose real name is Michael Malloy) has performed his ditty at a Panthers game, been featured on an episode of , and was tapped to grab the mic at halftime of the Wake Forest game on Jan. 20th, something he assured me at the time of our conversation was "breaking news." A few days after we talked, he even appeared on a Nov. 30 episode of Myron Metcalf and Matt Jones's Sunday morning show on ESPN Radio.
"I'm kind of speechless," Malloy, who appears as kind and generous as you'd expect, tells me of all the attention. "And that's a hard thing for me because I kind of talk all the time."
If you haven't yet heard it, "If I Had $150,000" is as catchy a song as it is silly, a track that calls to mind the prolific parodies of comedic mastermind "Weird Al" Yankovic (also one of Malloy's musical inspirations). And although the tune was not originally intended to become a Panthers rallying cry, it's not as though the singer/rapper was trying to hide his Carolina fandom, either.
"Even before I added the second verse [which references the Panthers], there was all this [Carolina] stuff in the background when I was recording videos, and I'm like, 'Well, I might as well just work in my favorite team,'" he tells me.
Indeed, the Carolina references came a long time after the song's initial release, which happened sometime in 2023, and to little fanfare. Around July 4th of this year, however, Malloy posted a video of himself lip-syncing to the track in front of his garage, and miming a money toss when the chorus came around.
Maybe that now-iconic choreography was what did it. Or maybe the world was just ready for his creation. Either way, that post began picking up traction. So he tweaked a few things, kept up the momentum, and, in August, acquiesced to writing a second verse.
Standing in front of a Panthers-themed wall in his house while wearing a Panthers hat, shirt and socks, Malloy debuted the new Carolina-forward lyrics in a social media post later that month:
The rest, as they say, was history.
Since then, Malloy has performed at a Panthers tailgate, in addition to the in-game performance vs. the Saints; received shoutouts from Carolina greats like Cam Newton and Jonathan Stewart, including an appearance on Stewart's podcast; and rapped with Nate Burleson on CBS's
Fans have asked him for autographs. He met Jake Delhomme, his favorite player. The Panthers even gifted him a custom jersey, in his favorite shade of blue, and with "Carolina Mic" on the back.
"This is a dream," he tells me, "so I'm just gonna dream my way right on through it."
